Major factors driving this expansion are the rise in pressure to cut healthcare costs, increasing demand to integrate healthcare systems, high rate of return on investment, according to a Research and Markets report. And other prominent forces include financial support from the U.S. government, federal initiatives, the rise in aging population, growing demand for CPOE adoption in order to reduce medication errors, and the rise in incidences of chronic disorders.

“Healthcare information technology has emerged as a promising development to transform the paper-based healthcare system into a digitized one,” the report’s authors wrote. “HCIT also gives clinicians real-time access to patient data, and provides them with support to make the best possible decisions. It streamlines processes and reduces administrative overhead. The impact of IT on healthcare in the past decade has been modest, despite the huge potential.”

The overall North American HIT realm is forecast to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 7.4 percent to reach $31.3 billion by 2017 from $21.9 billion in 2012, according to Research and Markets’ North American Healthcare IT Market Report 2013-2017.

The authors explain, however, that major constraints to the growth of the healthcare IT system include the high cost of HIT solutions, high maintenance and service costs, interoperability issues, shortage of HIT professionals, poor standard healthcare protocols such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and unprecedented growing incidences of patient data breaches.

Canada, meanwhile, is expected to register the highest CAGR of 7.7 percent respectively in the overall North America healthcare information technology market, followed by the U.S. at 7.2 percent.

The U.S. accounted for the highest share — 72.6 percent — of the North America healthcare IT market, however, and is expected to reach $22.6 billion by 2017 as compared with $15.9 billion in 2012.

Factors likely to propel the Canadian market are its public funded health structure, prominent role played by Canada Health Infoway, growing pressure to cut healthcare costs, and the rise in incidences of chronic diseases.